Y2K revisited the end of time decades ago, programmers trying to conserve valuab
ID: 3627055 • Letter: Y
Question
Y2K revisited
the end of time
decades ago, programmers trying to conserve valuable storage space shortened year values to two digits. this shortcut created what became known as the "Y2K"problem at the turn of the century.programmer needed to review billions of lines of code to ensure important programs would continue to operate correctly. the "Y2k"problem merged with the dot-com boom and created a tremendous demand for information technology employees. information system users spent billions of dollars fixing or replacing old software.the IT industry is only now beginning to recover from the post boom slump. could such hysteria happen again? it can and , very likely , it will.
today most programs use several different schemes to record dates.one scheme, POSIX time, widely employed on UNIX based systems,requires a signed 32 bit integer to store a number representing the number of seconds since January 1, 1970."0" represents midnight on January 1,"10" represent 10 seconds after midnight.a simple program then converts these date into any number of international date formats for display.this scheme works well because it allows programmer to subtract one date/time from another date/time and directly determine thhe interval between them. it also requires only 4 bytes of storage space.but 32 bits still calculates to finite number, whereas time is infinite. as a business manager, you will need to be aware rom repeating history. the following question will help you evaluate the situation and learn from history
a) if 1 represent 1 second and 2 represent for 2 seconds, how many seconds can be represented in a binary number 32 bit long? use a spreadsheet to show your calculations
b) give POSIX time starts at midnight, January 1, 1970 in what year will time "run out"? remember that half the available number represent dates before 1970.use a spreadsheet to show your calculation.
c) as a business manager, what can you do to minimize this problem for your organization?
please help me !!!
Explanation / Answer
a) 2^32 = 4,294,967,296 seconds
b) 2^32 / 60 / 60 / 24 / 365 / 2 = 68.096
Time will run out in year 1970+68 = 2038
c) Use a scheme other than POSIX that allows for more seconds for any software which may have to deal with dates beyond 2038 at any point.
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